Many companies believe that nothing will harm their reputation, that no matter what they do or what practices they employ, people will continue to buy their games. And this is often true in the short and medium term. However, trust, while hard to lose, can also be eroded over time. That’s why it’s not surprising that if a franchise consistently makes questionable decisions, it will eventually face consequences.
That has been the case with NBA 2K24. According to Steam 250, a website that tracks the top 250 and bottom 100 rated games on Steam, the latest iteration of the 2K basketball game is currently ranked second on one of these lists. And it’s not the list the developers would want.
NBA 2K24 is the second-worst rated game on Steam right now. With “Overwhelmingly Negative” reviews, with only 11% of them being positive out of over 2,900 accumulated reviews, the game, which was released on September 8, hasn’t had a good start. This is quite surprising, but not excessively so, given the average score it has on Metacritic: a 67. This is a terrible score for a franchise that has historically maintained ratings above 80 and only once dropped just below that mark, with the infamous NBA 2K21 scoring a 68.
What has led to such negative reviews? Essentially, it’s the developers’ negligence. The PC version is based on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions rather than the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions, which means it comes with certain compromises. The graphics are outdated, it lacks several game modes, and overall, it’s been treated as a lesser version of the game. When you add to that the very aggressive monetization in the game, the low ratings become self-explanatory. Even if 2K doesn’t like them.
